It's always very very awkward when there's a conversation about decolonization and one person goes off like, "yes, you see our ancestors sprung from the soil here 10,000 years ago, and the west is trying to say we MIGRATED 5000 years ago???? This is their scientists' grand distortion to make it acceptable to steal our land" as if some fucking conquistador would be like "seriously, 10,000 years? Oh shit, we'll move onto the next colony sorry to bother you"
I'm wondering if there really was some bizarre 1890's psuedo-intellectual/psuedo-scientific movement among like, British fancylads or something, to excuse a lot of recent colonizations... "Oh if they were there 100,000 years ago this colony business would be bad, but 30,000 years? They're practically squatters pip pip cheerio" and that idea kind of filtered down through the years - I've heard this complaint from like 3 or 4 different indigenous groups across the world, so maybe.
I don't really know how to handle this and I don't think anyone else does because they just wait around for it to be over. I never want to shit on people obviously, so silence is fine and probably ultimately the best response...
But it's like... everyone in that conversation knows that everyone outside the indigenous group (and probably most of the people inside it) don't believe any of that. And there's always, always an awkward silence. It's not like some mayo can be like "Yeah! I evolved from apes but like these folks came from the sky, it's true everyone"
I’m wondering if there really was some bizarre 1890’s psuedo-intellectual/psuedo-scientific movement among like, British fancylads or something, to excuse a lot of recent colonizations… “Oh if they were there 100,000 years ago this colony business would be bad, but 30,000 years? They’re practically squatters pip pip cheerio”
no that wouldn't have made any difference to their thinking either way if anything them being there longer would be a sign they might have built up some real wealth there that would entice conquest and theft even more. The colonial powers only respected the ability to defend territory with force as a compelling factor. Which brought them to the table with Shaka Zulu as an equal despite his country being birthed in his own lifetime
In the works of Rudyard Kipling for example the notion of a treasure placed there by Alexander the Great in his own conquest of India is an enticing factor for conquest. China was acknowledged as a civilisation far older than Europe but once the European powers smelled blood in the water that was no deterent to colonial exploitation
I'm not really talking about the conquerors, more like some people sitting around later, affected by humanist ideas possibly trying to make excuses for their enjoyment of tea or something. Idk
Who makes those claims? Ward Churchill? I don't hear anything like that from the indigenous groups I live with or any other I've come across. Funnily enough, it's usually the "educated" ones that largely abandoned their cultures making that claim. I've found that the oral histories are usually much more detailed and that stuff like "growing out of the ground" are used as interpretive symbolism more than anything.
But you did say across the world so it could be a group or individual that takes their oral history more literally than what I've come across.
when we can keep track of 40 kinds of seeds for 10 different kinds of crops, each of which grows better in different conditions allowing for planting in response to weather conditions (and keeping track of which of the near identical seeds is better for what) based solely on your perception (how?) of it's subatomic structure and comprehension of the chemical interactions between them, each other (polycropping) the soil, the weather, insects, etc, without resorting to any sort of metaphor or shorthand, then we can talk about science.
oh wait, we coulnd't do that. we introduced monocultures instead and annihilated the soil, forests, etc. oops, it worked well in theory/the lab tho 🤪 . we are very scientific, much materialism. materialism is when you observe something in labratory conditions for 12 months and then conclude it will work everywhere. 🤡
Systems of religion and "superstition" are generally how they keep track of an remember a ton of information. Western scientists disregarded their knowledge about the soils, seeds, crops, etc, as superstition bc they talked about it in terms that the scientists didn't understand. They then disregarded the knowledge and fucked tons of shit up, list of sources if you want to investigate is in the comment i made before this one. I am saying unless you are capable of keeping track of all this information, without resorting even once to metaphor or shorthand. Kuhn is a scientist who wrote about science, is the foundation of most of modern understandings of how science works lmao
It's always very very awkward when there's a conversation about decolonization and one person goes off like, "yes, you see our ancestors sprung from the soil here 10,000 years ago, and the west is trying to say we MIGRATED 5000 years ago???? This is their scientists' grand distortion to make it acceptable to steal our land" as if some fucking conquistador would be like "seriously, 10,000 years? Oh shit, we'll move onto the next colony sorry to bother you"
I'm wondering if there really was some bizarre 1890's psuedo-intellectual/psuedo-scientific movement among like, British fancylads or something, to excuse a lot of recent colonizations... "Oh if they were there 100,000 years ago this colony business would be bad, but 30,000 years? They're practically squatters pip pip cheerio" and that idea kind of filtered down through the years - I've heard this complaint from like 3 or 4 different indigenous groups across the world, so maybe.
I don't really know how to handle this and I don't think anyone else does because they just wait around for it to be over. I never want to shit on people obviously, so silence is fine and probably ultimately the best response...
But it's like... everyone in that conversation knows that everyone outside the indigenous group (and probably most of the people inside it) don't believe any of that. And there's always, always an awkward silence. It's not like some mayo can be like "Yeah! I evolved from apes but like these folks came from the sky, it's true everyone"
no that wouldn't have made any difference to their thinking either way if anything them being there longer would be a sign they might have built up some real wealth there that would entice conquest and theft even more. The colonial powers only respected the ability to defend territory with force as a compelling factor. Which brought them to the table with Shaka Zulu as an equal despite his country being birthed in his own lifetime
In the works of Rudyard Kipling for example the notion of a treasure placed there by Alexander the Great in his own conquest of India is an enticing factor for conquest. China was acknowledged as a civilisation far older than Europe but once the European powers smelled blood in the water that was no deterent to colonial exploitation
I'm not really talking about the conquerors, more like some people sitting around later, affected by humanist ideas possibly trying to make excuses for their enjoyment of tea or something. Idk
Who makes those claims? Ward Churchill? I don't hear anything like that from the indigenous groups I live with or any other I've come across. Funnily enough, it's usually the "educated" ones that largely abandoned their cultures making that claim. I've found that the oral histories are usually much more detailed and that stuff like "growing out of the ground" are used as interpretive symbolism more than anything.
But you did say across the world so it could be a group or individual that takes their oral history more literally than what I've come across.
when we can keep track of 40 kinds of seeds for 10 different kinds of crops, each of which grows better in different conditions allowing for planting in response to weather conditions (and keeping track of which of the near identical seeds is better for what) based solely on your perception (how?) of it's subatomic structure and comprehension of the chemical interactions between them, each other (polycropping) the soil, the weather, insects, etc, without resorting to any sort of metaphor or shorthand, then we can talk about science.
oh wait, we coulnd't do that. we introduced monocultures instead and annihilated the soil, forests, etc. oops, it worked well in theory/the lab tho 🤪 . we are very scientific, much materialism. materialism is when you observe something in labratory conditions for 12 months and then conclude it will work everywhere. 🤡
'scientists' in this thread need to read Kuhn!
?
Kind of feels like you're doing word association here
Systems of religion and "superstition" are generally how they keep track of an remember a ton of information. Western scientists disregarded their knowledge about the soils, seeds, crops, etc, as superstition bc they talked about it in terms that the scientists didn't understand. They then disregarded the knowledge and fucked tons of shit up, list of sources if you want to investigate is in the comment i made before this one. I am saying unless you are capable of keeping track of all this information, without resorting even once to metaphor or shorthand. Kuhn is a scientist who wrote about science, is the foundation of most of modern understandings of how science works lmao
Unless I am capable of keeping track of it, then what? What is the rest of that thought